Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I was raised by a divorced mother. She would often leave me with babysitters at night and go out to bars, clubs, parties, and rock concerts. She dated tons of guys and sometimes brought them home for one night stands. She smoked cigs and pot. My dad told me my mom was always the bad girl type, going back to high school. Wouldn't you expect a fun party mom like this to be permissive in raising her child? Well it was just the opposite..she was strict and domineering. She expected me to be perfectly behaved and layed the law down if I wasn't.
I'll give you an example of the double standard. My mother liberally used swear words in her vocabulary. When she heard me use one she got very angry and literally washed my mouth out with soap. The interesting thing is that actually worked. I rarely swear. I guess that punishment was more effective than having a good role model.
10 years ago I was friends with a young lady who was going through a bad girl stage. She was always going out to the clubs (wearing the sexiest clothes) and drinking. She was sleeping around a lot. She confessed how many sexual partners she had just in the past couple of years and I was shocked.
Well I recently found her on a social networking site. She is married now with kids. To my surprise she posts a lot about how very strict she is. She is a firm believer in spanking. She demands her children are well behaved. She even cancels birthday parties or Christmas presents if her children are bad. She said that when she says something she follows through with the punishment and this has been effective. She seems to have contempt towards permissive parents.
I actually think she sounds like a wonderful mother, there needs to be more like her. Maybe I am biased because I appreciate that my mother was strict with me (even if I didn't like it at the time). But what I find so fascinating is that I know just a short decade ago this strict disciplinarian was a wild party girl. Do bad girls become the strictest mothers? If so I wonder why this is?
I think a lot of former bad girls do become stricter parents mainly because we know all the tricks and have made the mistakes that we don't want our kids to follow in.
This is my sister. Unlike the OP, my sister's children would never know it. She portrayed herself to them as if she was always a saint, claiming she always got straight A's and excelled at everything she tried. The reality is that she was a runaway-----gone for two straight years. We can only imagine how she supported herself. The police found her in another city, put her on a plane and sent her home. Completely missing all education for the 9th and 10th grade, she was forced to drop out of high school.
To this day, her adult children have no idea about her past. Whatever her game, it worked. She raised extremely responsible children who are lovely adults. I think she could have been just as effective without outright lying. She could have simply kept her past private without replacing it with an alter identity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JayF
Do bad girls become the strictest mothers? If so I wonder why this is?
I think it's two-part. First, my sister truly did turn over a new leaf. She left her past in the past of a rebellious teen and moved forward into a life as a responsible adult. Second, I believe she never revealed her past to her children for fear she would lose credibility with them. It's easier to raise children to 'do as I do' than to try to convince them to 'not do what I did.' Learn-from-my-mistakes parenting is an uphill battle for any parent.
I think most parents want better for their kids than they had for themselves.
I think kids like structure and strictness. I think they like to know where the boundaries are. I think they get a feeling of security in knowing that their parents love them. We run a pretty strict home (although I think we are getting a little slacker) but anyway, kids come to our place who seem out of control elsewhere and yet at our place its all please and thankyou and may I and they wash their glass after having a drink and they put away toys and thank us when they leave.
The underlying issue, when talking about strict mothers, is that these women are controlling, and want to control the actions and behaviors of others. It may have nothing to do with the party girl aspect, but often, "party" girls, have OCD tendancies, and this goes along with the control issues. Sad for anyone who is a child of someone who gets their self esteem from having "perfect" children, so they have to be so strict and controlling.
My mom always described herself as "wild" when growing up- she didn't do a lot of bad things really, but she definitely didn't fit the standard of acceptable behavior of late 60's and early 70's small town Florida. She would rebel because her parents were so strict. Spanking only taught her how to get better at lying. She decided to bring me up in a completely different way... and it worked She's one of the most permissive parents I know and yet I'm the least wild of anyone I know.
I was raised by a divorced mother. She would often leave me with babysitters at night and go out to bars, clubs, parties, and rock concerts. She dated tons of guys and sometimes brought them home for one night stands. She smoked cigs and pot. My dad told me my mom was always the bad girl type, going back to high school. Wouldn't you expect a fun party mom like this to be permissive in raising her child? Well it was just the opposite..she was strict and domineering. She expected me to be perfectly behaved and layed the law down if I wasn't.
I'll give you an example of the double standard. My mother liberally used swear words in her vocabulary. When she heard me use one she got very angry and literally washed my mouth out with soap. The interesting thing is that actually worked. I rarely swear. I guess that punishment was more effective than having a good role model.
10 years ago I was friends with a young lady who was going through a bad girl stage. She was always going out to the clubs (wearing the sexiest clothes) and drinking. She was sleeping around a lot. She confessed how many sexual partners she had just in the past couple of years and I was shocked.
Well I recently found her on a social networking site. She is married now with kids. To my surprise she posts a lot about how very strict she is. She is a firm believer in spanking. She demands her children are well behaved. She even cancels birthday parties or Christmas presents if her children are bad. She said that when she says something she follows through with the punishment and this has been effective. She seems to have contempt towards permissive parents.
I actually think she sounds like a wonderful mother, there needs to be more like her. Maybe I am biased because I appreciate that my mother was strict with me (even if I didn't like it at the time). But what I find so fascinating is that I know just a short decade ago this strict disciplinarian was a wild party girl. Do bad girls become the strictest mothers? If so I wonder why this is?
When I was growing up. I wasnt wild but I wasnt innocent either.
No way are my girls going to do what I did when I was there age
I have an open communications with my kids and they tell me everything.
But some things I wont put up with. They know what I did when I was younger. I told my daughter I'd beat her if she did what I did. My kids have never really gave me no reason to be too strict on them.
In fact I used to have to try and sneak out because they acted like the umbilical cord was still attatched to them.
When your out in the world you know what the world is about and you dont want your kids to get hurt
My bestfriend is wild and she is very strict with her kids. She said she dont want them to do what she does.
I think they also want to spare their children the pain and anguish they probably experienced.
I think you are right ,when i was growing up i was left to my own devices i was very independant and did whatever i wanted, my parents really didn't bother to set any bounderies i wasn't a bad girl but i got into a lot of scrapes, a party girl.With my own children i didn't really want them to live that way, i knew what the pitfalls were and plus things are a bit different out there these days, more drugs and lots of peer pressure.I don't think parents want to spoil the kids fun, just protect.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The police found her in another city, put her on a plane and sent her home. Completely missing all education for the 9th and 10th grade, she was forced to drop out of high school. 
